From 76.50 million in May 1, 2000, Philippine’s population boosted rapidly up to 88.57million in August 1, 2007. Population grows around 12 million in just 7 years and it is cause by man factors. One of the factors in line is premarital sex, the Bible refers to premarital sex as “fornification”. Fornification is sexual intercourse between people outside the bind of marriage. This case is common to adolescence which frequently leads to unintended pregnancy at an early age.
Pregnancy in adolescence is a major problem that our society is facing. It causes a rapid growth of population and it contributes a lot in increasing number of out of school youth. Teenage mothers often drop out of school and often unemployed, while teenage fathers tend to look for a job at an early age to meet the expectation of the society and family on the roles of a father. Teenage pregnancy is a complex problem; it leads to many social issues just like abortion, use of contraceptives and sex education in the public schools. Of course, no one is greatly affected of this problem except the adolescent mother herself and her offspring. Pregnancy at a very young age increases health risks to both the offspring and the mother. Infants born to adolescent mothers are more likely to have low birth weight- a serious factor is infant mortality- as well as childhood illness (Dryfoos, 1990; Schorr, 1989). Adolescence loses his or her social life and they become stagnant because they have to take care of the infant instead of going out on dates and enjoying their single lives. The infants are affected by how their parents treat them because parents at a young age are not prepared physically, emotionally and psychologically. The positive expectation of young people to babies turns bitter for babies serve as a hindrance in growing for adolescence. One more thing, premarital sex contributes in transmission of sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea, syphilis and worst HIV AIDS.
There are some ways to reduce pregnancy and sexual urges in adolescence. It is common to adolescence to have a great sexual urge but that doesn’t mean that adolescent should always give in to these urges. From the start of an individual’s understanding, the parents should always be open in sensitive things like sexuality. Some might say that sex education is a great help for students to understand what sex really means but for me, why don’t parents, teachers and other elderly teach a great foundation of values formation and let the students understand what life is all about. Family planning should be discussed not only by the couples or parents in the family but with their children. Media today shows a great deal with sex, it literally shows that sex is adult and fun. Adolescence is the stage of adjusting from childhood to adulthood and most of the adolescent tend to fast forward their lives into the adulthood stage so parental guidance is really important. This next recommendation goes for the adolescence; adolescences should not expose themselves into foreplay because they might fall into the temptation, and if in case they have fallen into it I suggest that they should have an access to contraceptive methods. I see this as the least solution to do because I believe that prevention is better than cure. In most cases, it is males that have almost uncontrollable sexual urges so I suggest that males or even females should just stick to self stimulation and wait for the right time to have heterosexual coitus.
Six in ten Filipino women say that they have experienced an unintended pregnancy at some point of their lives. About 1.43 million pregnancies each year- nearly half all pregnancies in the Philippines- are unintended (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/08/08/PhilippinesUPIA.pdf). If the said solutions above would be applied, therefore it would lower the risks of unintended pregnancy among Filipinos.
The recommended solutions will be possible with broad community involvement and support. These will root inside the families and sooner or later will spread out into the community as well as our corresponding country. In addition, adolescents should be responsible for their actions.
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